I had an amazing experience last night walking home from the train stop by my house. It was raining a bit and I was doing the flipped up collar, elbows tucked in, hands in pockets at 1.5X speed walk. In the rain I passed a blind woman who seemed a little bit distressed. She had veered off the sidewalk a bit and was thrashing her cain on the garbage cans in an alley. As I passed her, I remember thinking “getting around a city without the ability to see is hard enough, I can imagine that doing it in the rain makes it 10 times harder”. And that genuinely bothered me. What if she’s lost her way just enough that she is completely disoreinted? How is she going to get home? Suddenly, I felt empathy and I panicked for myself in that position for a moment, and then I realized how callous I was being by trying to remain an unnoticed observer. I spent the next 10-20 seconds being acutely aware of just how much I could see.

When I got the end of the block, I turned around. I was about 30 yards ahead of her. Her head was down, and she was using her cain to feel her surroundings and fish herself out of the alley. Without really considering the best thing to say, I yelled “Follow the sound of my voice and you’ll walk straight down the sidewalk to the end of the block!!!”

In one rapid motion, her body turned, her head snapped up and, with closed blind eyes, she looked directly at me. The feeling and the rush I got from it was unforgettable.

And then she was on her way. No thank you or explination necessary.

Cool.

(From A Previous Blog Post on 15th-Apr-2006 08:57 am)